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Broadcaster Ulric Williams introduces an interview with Lieutenant Jim Godwin of Blenheim [military service number 819576], who is one of the only members of J Force who has already been in Japan. He was interned as a prisoner of war in Japan for 14 or 15 months from mid-1944.
He spent the first part of the war serving in the Fleet Air Arm, then returned to New Zealand on leave in 1943. He was on board a merchant vessel bound for Bombay in March 1944 when it was intercepted by the Japanese navy and he and the rest of the crew were termed 'dishonourable prisoners of war'. They were taken to Batavia in Java, where they spent three months, then on to Japan. They were handcuffed for the whole voyage and the food was terrible.
In Japan, he was in three different camps: Ofuna near Yokohama, Aomori near Tokyo and Niigata. Ofuna was the worst as it was a secret questioning camp run by the Navy. Prisoners were not even registered here.
He was attached to the Australian War Crimes Section in 1946 and was able to revisit two of the camps. Some repatriated Japanese soldiers are are living at Ofuna and Aomori with their families.
In Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, he met several of his former guards who are awaiting trial on war crimes. He says they are subservient now, entirely different men. He will be giving evidence at the minor war crimes trial in Yokohama.
The interviewer comments that it must be nice to get his own back. Jim Godwin agrees and ends the interview by greeting his family back home.
This recording is one of a series made by the New Zealand Broadcasting Service unit stationed with J Force troops in Japan, 1946-1948. The recordings were sent back for playing on radio in New Zealand as part of the series 'With the Kiwis in Japan.'